


soothing

by Misila



Category: Free!
Genre: Day 8, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Pre-Relationship, RinHaru Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misila/pseuds/Misila
Summary: Haruka forgets his hoodie in Rin's flat when he visits him in Australia. It'll be a few months until Rin can give it back.





	soothing

 

 

 

 

The first time Haruka visits Rin in Australia, he stays in his flat for a week.

Though in all honesty, sleeping is nearly all they use it for, since they spend most of the time visiting every place Rin couldn’t show him during that surprise trip on their last year of high school, Haruka grows familiar with the flat surprisingly quickly; in less than one day he knows the layout by heart, his steps no longer hesitant as he heads to the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom— he even ventures to buy mackerel on his own one afternoon, and he looks rather proud upon coming back and announcing he’s making dinner tonight.

Rin thinks Haruka could manage well, were he going to stay in Sydney for a longer time. The remark tickles his lips the day Haruka’s visit ends, laced with unlikely scenarios that both warm up his chest and stab through his heart, but it’s too foolish for Rin to say it aloud.

Instead he wraps his arms around Haruka’s shoulders, pulls him close enough to stop hearing the chatter filling the airport. Upon the initial shock Haruka hugs him back, clings to fistfuls of Rin’s jacket, leans his head against Rin’s.

“I had a lot of fun,” he admits. “Thank you for inviting me.”

The comment itches in the back of Rin’s throat, but instead he draws back.

“You can come anytime. My flat is way too big for me alone, anyway.” His shy smile grows confident as Haruka’s eyes light up with a smirk of his own, and Rin feels stupid for the uneasiness overcoming him all of a sudden. “But I’ll be back for Christmas, so I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Haruka looks as if he wants to say something, but just as he opens his mouth a female voice announces he should be on his way to boarding the plane.

“…I’ll text you when I arrive,” is what he finally mutters, fingers curling around the handle of his suitcase.

Rin can tell that’s not what Haruka originally wanted to say, but what right does he have to reproach anyone to keep things for themselves?

“Alright.” He waves goodbye as Haruka turns around. “Have a safe flight.”

When Rin arrives back home, it occurs to him that _too big for me alone_ isn’t as much of an exaggeration as it sounded like in the airport.

 

 

 

The next morning, Rin awakens to silence and a text awaiting in his phone.

It’s from Haruka, so Rin shouldn’t be surprised it’s barely three words long. But something about the concise _Landed in Tokyo_ carves twin creases between his brows, even though he can’t tell what feels off about it.

He quickly pushes the matter to the back of his mind. Rin has more urgent matters to attend; between swimming, studying and keeping up with his friends both in Australia and Japan, Haruka’s text is among the least of his concerns. They’re slowly but surely getting the hang of this whole keeping in touch business, anyway, even if more often than not their conversations consist on discussing training regimes and coming up with things to compete over once they’re in the same hemisphere and arguing about who would be better at them.

Besides, Rin soon has to face a new, unexpected problem.

His flat does really feel too big since Haruka left.

Perhaps Haruka isn’t the only one who grew used to the place too quickly; Rin can nearly see his friend looking through the window every time he steps in the living room, struggling to disentangle himself from the sheets of the spare bed Russell lent Rin. If he focuses, he can even hear noises coming from the kitchen, just like the night Haruka decided he would rather practise his English at the fish market than sticking to Rin’s diet for the whole week.

And Rin wants to kick himself because if he were able to keep his feet on the ground for longer than five minutes, he wouldn’t be daydreaming about the absolutely non-existent likelihood of Haruka wanting to move in with him.

 

 

 

All things considered, it takes Rin awfully long to find something to blame for the situation.

A little more than a week after Haruka left, he sweeps it from under his friend’s bed, covered in the thinnest layer of dust. Rin frowns as he picks it up— with his friend staying for a week, he might have not been as thorough about cleaning up his flat as he usually is. The culprit probably fell out of Haruka’s suitcase, tucked under the bed most of the time, and stayed forgotten until now.

Rin leaves the broom leaning against the wall, dusts the item off and lies it on his lap in mild wonder— he recognises the black hoodie with nearly insulting ease, slides his index along the edges of what he has always interpreted as the tail of a blue whale right before it sinks into the water. Even its scent is unmistakable.

It’s definitely Haruka’s, and from his silence on the matter Rin can only infer that he hasn’t yet realised he forgot it in Australia.

 

 

 

Haruka’s hoodie smells pretty much like him, warm and fresh at once. The scent of detergent is faint enough that Rin can discern other shades clinging to the fabric— tropical-scented gel, chlorine and something that reminds Rin of the sea, as well as the gentle hint Rin associates with the way his heart trips over its own beats at Haruka’s closeness, though now it soothes him instead.

Haruka is just as far as ever regardless of whether Rin smells him or not, but clinging to the fabric is sweet enough of a dream. At least, until he sees Haruka again.

 

 

 

For some reason, every time Rin tries to tell Haruka he has his hoodie, something holds him back.

Sometimes it’s Haruka coming up with something else to talk about. Sometimes Rin has more urgent matters to discuss— even if it’s the strange remarks Mikhail sometimes makes about Haruka’s coach, which aren’t any less weird than what Haruka’s coach comments about him.

Sometimes it’s Rin’s heart beating too loudly for him to stay on the phone, because sniffing at his friend’s clothes for comfort is both embarrassing and a bit disturbing and he doesn’t want Haruka to even suspect any of it is happening.

So Rin leaves the hoodie carefully folded on Haruka’s bed to remember to take it back to Japan on Christmas, manages to reduce the most painful part of his yearning to the minutes he spends curled up around it.

 

 

 

Nearly two months after Rin finds Haruka’s hoodie, he falls ill.

It takes him a while to notice. The first day he is slower than half his teammates and the second one Mikhail’s remarks come in through one ear and out through the other without Rin retaining a single word of it, brain slowly but surely melting.

But the third day it’s hard to keep his head raised, and Mikhail grabs his arms to make him turn around towards the exit as soon as he walks in the building.

“But my times will keep getting worse if I go home.”

“We’ll talk about times when you feel better,” Mikhail replies, oddly stern. He even accompanies Rin to the train station.

On the ride home, Rin acknowledges that the cold beginning of spring isn’t enough to explain the shivers running down his spine, much less the ache clinging to his joints even though he stays as still as he can.

And to top if all, when Rin gets off the train it’s pouring.

Rin’s teeth are chattering as he walks back inside his flat; he leaves a trail of soaked clothes in his wake, shoes and jacket and socks and pants scattered along the way to the bedroom; but for once fixing the mess isn’t Rin’s top priority.

He grabs the hoodie he transferred to his bed when Russell took Haruka’s back to his own house, puts it on before crawling under the covers to sleep.

But instead he thinks that the flat is really too big, that he’s alone and that neither his mother nor Gou are going to show up with something for him to eat— he’ll have to cook himself once he feels recovered enough to move around.

It occurs to Rin that even the first time he came to Australia he had Lori and Russell to take care of him.

Now there is really nobody.

Rin huffs, reaches out for the phone he forgot on the nightstand before leaving earlier. He stares at the screen for a couple of minutes, then types a short text— it’s stupid, he’s being stupid and he knows it, but he’s sick and feverish and so lonely he’s about to cry.

Forgetting the phone, Rin pulls at the collar of the black hoodie, buries his nose in it. Even if he’s shivering violently, the fabric smells just like every day since he found it— fruits and chlorine and sea and Haruka’s closeness.

And his heart slows down, hurts a bit less.

 

 

 

The ringing of his phone worsens Rin’s headache, but he can think more clearly when he opens his eyes, puffy and reddened.

He grabs the device, picks up without even reading who’s calling, pressing it to his ear.

“Rin?” Rin’s heart leaps to his throat at the urgency soaking Haruka’s voice. “Is… everything alright?”

“Ah, yes?” Rin rubs at his eyes, momentarily lost. “What about you? Did something happen?”

For a couple of seconds, Haruka is silent.

“Not here. But your text was weird. That’s why I called.”

It takes Rin’s sluggish brain a bit to understand. The text… What did it say?

_Ah._

_Uh-oh_.

“Oh, that.” Rin huffs, curling up into himself in shame. “I’m sorry, Haru, I just… I’m a bit sick, I didn’t really think it through. But everything is okay. Sorry I worried you.”

Haruka only hangs up after making sure Rin’s illness isn’t life-threatening. Rin finds new tears flowing down his cheeks, though now he can’t help the small smile quirking up the corners of his lips as he rereads the text: 

> **09.56  
>  To: Haru  
>  I really wish I were in Japan right now**

 

 

 

Haruka is in the airport when Rin’s plane lands in Tokyo.

This time he doesn’t hesitate before returning Rin’s hug; he stays very still, as if something were to break if he moves.

“Isn’t that hoodie mine?”

Rin freezes.

He spent half the flight making up an excuse to cover up the fact that he was too shaken up by a nightmare to put anything else on when he awoke, but now it feels childish and not believable.

“…I was cold,” he eventually whispers, voice thin. Haruka nods, and he probably knows Rin is lying but for the time being they can leave it at that.

The embrace is way too comfortable; Rin closes his eyes.

“I’m home,” he announces, because he was about to say that before Haruka spoke.

But in that moment, he realises what sounded strange about Haruka’s text when he left Sydney a few months ago.

And as Haruka finally steps back, Rin can swear he whispers the quietest _me too_.

 

 

 

 


End file.
